


Day 1: A Day in the Life

by likethedirection



Series: Sheriarty 30 Day Challenge 2016 [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, Loneliness, M/M, Oh yeah and hidden cameras, Okay it's kinda schmoopy you've been warned, Sheriarty 30 Day Challenge, Vague description of mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethedirection/pseuds/likethedirection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Jim Moriarty, as observed by Sherlock Holmes, before and after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 1: A Day in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Sheriarty 30 Day Challenge](http://sincerelyjimlock.tumblr.com/post/146926763135/sheriarty-30-day-challenge) on Tumblr! I make no promises about how many days I'll actually manage to hit, but this was fun. :)

The wise thing to do, when Sherlock at last uncovered the location of Jim Moriarty’s elusive London flat, would have been to phone Mycroft.  Or, to give Moriarty a bit of a head-start to keep things interesting, he might have at least notified Lestrade.  Mentioned it in passing to John.  To Molly, even.  Told someone, anyone at all.

Instead, partly for the sake of retribution and largely for the sake of his own curiosity, Sherlock broke into the flat, took a moment to breathe the air of this empty, forbidden space, and hid a camera.

He was not, by definition, a voyeur.  But this was Moriarty.  This was Moriarty unaware of observation, robbed of his convenient characters and accomplices and dramatics.  This was the man.  Overlooking an opportunity to observe him thus would be to rob himself of far too much.  So each night, after John went to bed, Sherlock shut himself in his room and went to his computer to review the day’s recording, keeping notepad and pencil close at hand. Over the span of just a week, he learned many things.

He learned that James Moriarty does not like waking up in the morning, but he has a small ritual for it nonetheless.  Once awake, he turns onto his back and stares at the ceiling, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for several.  Then he will get up.  

(One day was an exception: Moriarty did not get up, but curled up on his side, eyes open, and didn’t move for an hour.  Sherlock watched and re-watched that segment, trying to read it, trying to understand.)

Once out of bed, he foregoes tea and eats an apple with one hand while typing rapidly with the other.  He texts, he makes calls (now English, now Portuguese, now Dutch, now Mandarin), and he researches.  Occasionally he gets up and stretches, a halfhearted attempt to soothe the chronic tension he carries in his neck and shoulders.  He would go out and stay gone for hours, through which Sherlock would impatiently fast-forward, and he would come back as immaculately dressed and groomed as when he left, save the heaviness in his step as soon as he shut the door behind himself.

He never touched anyone.  Few of his employees seemed to be permitted knowledge of his private space, but the few who did would stand at a respectful distance while Moriarty lounged on the sofa, or prowled about the sitting room, or shouted in their faces - this latter, usually if they had deviated from instructions or cost him time.  Once they were gone, he would pace and pace, muttering to himself, sometimes rapidly typing things into his phone.  Then, as evening approached, he would change out of his expensive suits and into sleep-clothes, and pull a book from the shelf, a different one each time.  Of particular note was the way Moriarty sat during this solitude, his legs pulled up, his free arm curled absently around his torso.  Once or twice, several minutes passed without him even opening the book, instead just sitting there with his arms wrapped loosely around himself, eyes closed.  Engineering his own embrace.

It all carried with it the ache of recognition.  Many of James Moriarty’s private moments could just as easily have been his own, before he had anyone to share his space - Sherlock eating his toast with one hand and writing or researching with the other, Sherlock pacing the floor murmuring his way through the more complex puzzles, Sherlock lying curled in his own arms on the couch when the stark _nothing_ got to be too much.  Recognition was where it started.  It was where all things started, with the two of them.  Recognition was what led them from where they were, observing each other on hidden cameras, communicating only through puzzles and games, to where they have come.

Sherlock knows much more now.

He knows that Jim is a fitful sleeper, restless, kicking and muttering.  He argues with ancient philosophers in his dreams.  Being jarred awake triggers his survival instincts, his heart rate jolting up, his hand shooting out in search of a throat; being wrapped in arms makes him initially tense, then sigh and curl up like a child.  Sleep is a battle, and waking is exhausting, and so he fights it as long as he can.

When he turns onto his back and stares silently at the ceiling, he is doing one of two things.  If it is a good day, he is planning.  His spiderweb spreads before his eyes, and he slots every necessary step into its appropriate place in the day to come.  He decides exactly who must be exactly where, exactly when, and what manner of force must be applied in order to ensure that it is so.  Sherlock will always watch him do this if he can.  He will rest his ear on the pillow and observe the flickers of his unfocused eyes, so minute, as he glances from thread to thread.  Too small a movement to be picked up on camera.  A recording would not do it justice.

On these good days, Jim will take the time he needs to plan what he must, and then his long eyelashes will flutter, and he will take a deep breath, as though this is his real awakening.  If his time schedule is demanding, he will kiss Sherlock - often on the knuckles, sometimes rolling on top of him to catch his mouth, quick and deep - once, twice, and then roll out of bed and take his warmth with him.  If the schedule is more forgiving, he will drop his head to the side and observe Sherlock observing him.  He’ll close his eyes, at ease, if Sherlock kisses his forehead.  If Sherlock chooses to drape himself over him, Jim will wrap one arm around his shoulders, fold the other behind his head, and sigh.

(He’s unbearably smug about it whenever Sherlock seeks out any part of him: his knowledge, his heat, his touch, his darkness.  Sherlock has been experimenting with increasingly creative ways to shut him up.)

On good days, Jim stares at the ceiling and plans and predicts, and Sherlock can nearly see his brilliance crackling above him like lightning in the air.  On bad days, Jim stares at the ceiling and tries, silently, desperately, to come up with one good reason to get out of bed.

His eyes do not move on the bad days.  They might be painted glass, his face smooth stone, as though he is trying on death to see if it suits him.

Sherlock does not watch him on the bad days.  He cannot.

Convincing himself to continue breathing takes longer than running the world.  Sherlock will pretend to sleep, occasionally cracking his eyes open long enough to watch Jim’s chest rise and fall before closing them again.  He knows Jim has returned to him when the mattress shifts.  If he curls toward Sherlock, he has managed to turn himself from stone to flesh and bone again, and he will welcome it if Sherlock gathers him close, kisses him, whispers against his hairline.  If Jim curls away, he requires silence and space as he wills his every cell back into existence, one by one.  Sherlock has learned not to touch him if he turns away.  He has also learned not to leave him there.  

So he stays, turned toward Jim, until Jim takes a deep, unsteady breath and mutters an item on his agenda.  A clean-hands task, always.  A small one, usually, though over time they have grown a bit higher-profile.  And Sherlock will murmur back precisely when and how he will accomplish the task in Jim’s stead, to give him just a bit of extra space to breathe on a day when breathing is difficult.  Jim will give him an instruction, or a warning, or a threat, of something that will keep Sherlock safe in his task.  Sherlock will whisper, _Yes._  And he’ll come forward when Jim reaches back for him, wrapping around him and kissing the nape of his neck.

They will manage to be human another day.

And Sherlock knows now that Jim eats an apple during his first job of the day because regular meals are integral to his sanity, and because apples make Jim think of him.  He knows that if he comes behind the couch and drapes his arms over Jim’s shoulders, there is a chance Jim will hold up the apple to let him take a bite.  He knows Jim didn’t drink much tea before because he’s never liked the flavor of the tea he brews himself.  Since Sherlock has started brewing it, tea has become a ritual again.

He knows that Jim would in fact rather be comfortable than stylish, but that he is also keenly aware of what makes for an effective performance.  They spend hours in the sitting room, days, competing and debating and playing games, Sherlock in his dressing gown, Jim in sweatpants and a soft T-shirt and bare feet, looking at ease and achingly touchable.

But Jim is a performer, and performances, he’s told Sherlock - sounding ridiculous, talking around a toothbrush, his mouth full of foam - are most effective when they contain a kernel of truth.  The Moriarty to whom Sherlock was first introduced was not everything Jim is, but that does not mean he does not exist behind Jim’s eyes.  Jim Moriarty does not like to dirty his hands, but that is not to say he _will_ not.  Every so often, Jim will come home splattered in red, once coated up to the elbow, his eyes cold and hard as diamonds.  Most often, he will not speak, going directly to the shower, and then emerging as though nothing happened.  Once, he did not go to the shower, but dropped onto the couch, lit a cigarette, and turned on the television.  He stayed there watching an inane talk show, blood and all, until the cigarette was finished.  Then he turned the television off, silently stood, and went to wash himself clean again.

Jim’s hands are not clean, of course.  Sherlock’s are not clean.  Some things linger, and will always.  But Jim does not go a day without kissing his fingers, and Sherlock will only ever lean into Jim’s touch.

They always touch.  Sherlock made a point of it, early on, touching Jim.  Small, innocuous things, and Jim eyed him as though he knew he was doing _something_ , knew _something_ , but was not certain what.  In the evening, when Jim’s pacing has slowed, they settle in on the sofa with their books.  Sherlock wraps around him.  Jim leans into the crook of Sherlock’s neck and reads silently, holding his book in both hands.

Jim’s days are carefully controlled, even these moments of relaxation, and it is so different from Sherlock’s spontaneous romps through London from one curiosity to another.  They learned early on, rather violently at both ends, that Sherlock is not to be controlled, and Jim does not like having to change his plans.  Sherlock hates him for his penchant for control as much as he loves what he creates with it, just as Jim hates and loves Sherlock for his skill at finding the right thread to pull to unravel his carefully arranged chaos.

He never did stop hating Jim, not completely.  The hatred only shifted, or perhaps it was only the light that shifted, glancing off the love that came with it, just like the admiration that came with the anger, the recognition that came with the ache, each pair bonded together like atoms.

Sherlock knows this, now.

He asked, once, what Jim made of his recordings of Baker Street.  Jim refused to be serious at first, only giving a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows, but Sherlock outlasted him with a flat stare, and he sighed.

  _I liked your violin_ , he admitted.   _You played me to sleep for a while._

That’s all he would say that evening, but Sherlock understood, perhaps more deeply than he understood anything.  Jim had watched his enemy going through the minutia, all the tedious mundanities, and glimmering behind it was recognition.  For them, it is as good as falling in love.

Jim’s night routine has changed of late.  There are, of course, the nights one of them drags the other into bed, their clothes landing in a pile on the floor, their hands grabbing at each other like one of them might vanish, their bodies sliding together with the exhilaration of two halves reuniting.  Good nights that lead to deep sleeps.  There are also the nights when Sherlock has lost himself in an experiment and nearly collapses face-first into his petri dish, and Jim ultimately threatens him with chloroform to get him into bed.

And there are the nights like this one, when Jim’s anxiety is high enough to show in the stiff line of his back, and Sherlock quietly retrieves his violin.

He plays for as long as it takes.  He watches the tension melt away, the tapping fingers slow to a stop, the dark eyes closing, blissful.  When he’s finished, he joins Jim in bed, accepts his grateful kiss, and rolls partway on top of him for a long, lazy snog until both of their eyes are drooping.  He kisses Jim’s forehead as he closes his eyes, then rolls to his own side, because he cannot fall asleep tangled up with someone, and either way he knows that by morning, they'll have found each other again.  They always do.  

Tomorrow, Sherlock will wake when Jim does.  He will watch Jim blink up at the ceiling.  

 

They will touch.


End file.
